Could this be the moment that drug manufacturing takes off in orbit?

More frequent access

Asparouhov said that several trend lines have converged, enabling Varda and United Therapeutics to collaborate. There is the bedrock of research done on board the ISS, increased capital for space startups like Varda, and the rise of reusable rockets that has brought down the cost of access to space and increased the cadence. Varda’s spacecraft, with a mass of a few hundred kilograms, typically fly on SpaceX’s periodic Transporter missions that launch dozens of space missions at a time.

Although he declined to discuss the explicit financial details of this agreement, Asparouhov said it will allow his company and United Therapeutics to do a large number of screening tests on the ground, principally in Varda’s new 10,000 square-foot pharmaceutical lab in El Segundo, California, and then to take these most promising applications to space.

Over time, scientists have come to understand that when molecules assemble in microgravity—that is, in Earth orbit—they do so more slowly and consistently. The crystalline structure of molecules is more uniform, rather than a broad variation.

This turns out to be quite useful in some pharmaceutical applications, including allowing drugs to dissolve more consistently, retain a longer shelf life or reduce cold storage requirements, and reducing side effects. Essentially, yanking gravity away is another tool, just like temperature or pressure, that drug manufacturers can apply to improve their products.

I’m not just the president, I’m also a client

Varda’s W-6 spacecraft is presently in orbit, and Asparouhov said three more vehicles are being prepped to launch this year. The plan is to increase that cadence to seven launches next year. The company presently has about 200 employees and has raised $330 million to date.

Long term, Varda’s goal is not to be a space company, but rather a pharmaceutical company that operates in space and brings valuable materials back to Earth.

“We’re not just building the reentry systems,” Asparouhov said. “We’re also building the largest customer for those reentry systems, which is our whole internal pharmaceutical business. Because at the end of the day, what are you reentering? If you’re bringing things back from space it’s either humans, in which case there’s plenty of sort of human-rated things; and then if you’re not bringing back humans, it’s got to be a pretty darn valuable product.”